If you’re like me, few things are as appealing as a book about the creative process.  If it’s a book that helps unlock creativity…it’s even better.  That’s why when I heard about Unstuck: 52 Ways to Get (and Keep) Your Creativity Flowing at Home, at Work & in Your Studio…I placed the order that day!  And I wasn’t disappointed!

Created by artist and designer Noah Scalin, Unstuck isn’t really a book.  It’s actually more like a set of 52 creative projects or assignments that prompt the creative process…in surprising ways.  It shouldn’t be a surprise, I guess.  Scalin is perhaps best known for his skull-a-day project (sounds weird…really more of a creativity driving process).

The projects are designed in such a way as to allow for very quick implementation (30 seconds to two minutes, medium engagement (2 minutes to 30 minutes) and longer involvement (an hour or more).  Beyond a range of time involved, the projects also can be done in a variety of locations (home, work, anywhere).

There’s a wide variety of projects, too.  Some involve basic drawing, others are word projects, and some involve creative assembly of some kind.  For a creative wannabe like me…it’s a great set of exercises.  My favorite (and yet still in process)?  The Creativity Shrine!  Trust me…it’s on the way!

This is a great little creativity booster.  Can’t wait to work my way through it!  You can order your copy right here.

If you’ve been following the scene here at StrategyCentral.org, then you know that I’m always looking for resources that help develop disruptive innovation.

The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and and Clayton M. Christensen is that kind of resource.  If you recognize Christensen’s name, it is because he is recognized as the world’s foremost authority on disruptive innovation.

When Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma was first published in 1997, it was clear that he was following in the footsteps of Joseph Shumpeter, architect of the concept of creative destruction.  The Innovator’s DNA moves well beyond theory with a set of five skills that can be mastered.  A key assumption of the book is that while certain innovators clearly have the reputation (Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Jeff Bezos, etc.), their behaviors can be learned and emulated.  A comprehensive study confirming this was done by a group of researchers (Reznikoff, Domino, Bridges, and Honemon) who studies creative abilities in 117 pairs of identical and fraternal twins.  The researchers discovered that only 30% of creative performance could be attributed to genetics.

In fact, the authors “describe in detail five skills that anyone can master to improve his or her own ability to be an innovative thinker (p. 11).”  The five skills are:

• Associating: “Innovators discover new directions by making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.”
• Questioning: “Innovators are consummate questioners who show a passion for inquiry.”
• Observing: Innovators “carefully watch the world around them.”
• Networking: “Innovators spend a lot of time and energy finding and testing ideas through a diverse network of individuals who vary widely in their backgrounds and perspectives.”
• Experimenting: “Innovators are constantly trying out new experiences and piloting new ideas.”

The promise of The Innovator’s DNA is that you and I can learn the skills to become more innovative.  Does it live up to the promise?  I think it does!  Each of the chapters that dissect and examine the five skills includes a set of tips for developing them.  The best part?  I really think anyone could apply some or all of the tips and begin to develop these skills.

Part Two takes a look at the DNA of the world’s most innovative companies.  As fascinating an examination as it is, the best part is that this section looks at how to put the innovator’s DNA into practice with people, processes, and philosophies.  I have to say, my copy is really marked up, underlined and starred in this section.  There is a lot here that will benefit all of us!

If you want to become a more innovative organization, I hope you’ll pick up a copy of The Innovator’s DNA.  I know I loved it…and I’m betting you will too!

Steve Jobs is gone…but there’s is something about the Think Different commercial that is so powerful.  Every time I see it, I’m reminded again of the intangible creativity and innovative design vision that Steve brought to the table.

Can’t see the video? You can watch it right here. (HT Scott Williams)

If you’re always looking for ways to find better ideas, The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make Them Happen, by Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer is a must read!  I’m constantly on the lookout for resources that will help me jettison the status quo.  The Idea Hunter was just the ticket.

If Boynton name is familiar, you might be familiar with his Managerial DeepDive workshop.  Developed as a result of idea hunting at IDEO (the world’s premier design firm), these workshops are now being used in creating innovation and growth strategies, visioning the future, redesigning processes or organizations, managing and leading change.

Packed with practices and highly implementable concepts (some that were immediately adopted), I ended up with a pretty marked up book.

The Idea Hunter jumps right in with a very helpful section on finding your gig.  Whether you’ve already been in a field for years or you’re just looking for what it is that you were made to do…this is very good stuff.  Taking their lead from Tom Peter’s set of four questions designed to help readers discern their gig (i.e., What do I want to be?, What do I want to stand for?, Does my work matter?, and Am I making a difference?), Boynton and Fischer add in several additional question sets.  Did I say this already?  This is great stuff!

I particularly loved the way the authors boiled down the process to four key steps:

• INTERESTED: Be Interested, Not Just Interesting.  Makes a lot of sense.  As a collector of great quotes and anecdotes, I loved the Einstein line: “I have no special talents.  I am only passionately curious.”  You can definitely see where this section is going, but the ideas here will have impact.
• DIVERSE: Diversifying the Hunt.  It’s about what Jack Welch called “boundarylessness.”  It’s about what IDEO refers to as being a “T” thinker.  It’s about the conviction that “someone, somewhere, has a better idea.”  There are a bunch of great ideas in this chapter that will help you begin to think (and hunt) more broadly.
• EXERCISED: Mastering the Habits of the Hunt.  This chapter is all about putting together the daily habits that will allow you to capture the new ideas you trip across.
• AGILE: Idea Flow is Critical:  There is a goldmine here!  Simple ways to generate idea flow.  Along with nuggets from Steve Jobs and Twyla Tharp, I found a technique from New York Times reporter Olivia Judson right in line with the way my brain works.  Great stuff!

For me, the very best components of The Idea Hunter were the Ideawork sections that immediately followed each of their four concepts.  I came away with a great workshop exercise, a tremendous insight into how Warren Buffett finds superior value, a Twyla Tharp method of assembling an idea portfolio, and a great key to determining if it’s just a great idea or one that really fits the definition of gig-friendliness.

I like this book!  The Idea Hunter (affiliate link) is a book you should pick up if you’re interested in finding the best ideas, the ones that will take you to the next level.

If you lead meetings and need to be more innovative…you’re going to want to pick up a copy of Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers.  Wow!  What a great resource!

I caught co-author Sunni Brown on a presentation she gave for Duarte Designs and knew I needed to check this book out.  I was not disappointed.

At the outset, Gamestorming points out that while in “industrial work, we want to manage work for consistent, repeatable, and predictable results,” that won’t produce breakthrough ideas.  Since the goal isn’t “to incrementally improve on the past but to generate something new,” you’re going to have to do things to make it possible for your team to “imagine a world that we can’t really fully conceive yet.”

You’ve probably heard of the way the military uses game playing to develop and teach strategy.  That’s the concept here.  At over 250 pages, this book is really a toolbox full of some of the best practice concepts used by many of the most creative companies.

After establishing a basic pattern (gamestorming involves opening exercises that are divergent, exploring exercises that are emergent, and closing exercises that are convergent), the rest of the book is made up of tools that you can learn to use as you put together your own opportunities to gamestorm.

Each of the included exercises features the object of play, the number of players that can play, the duration of play, a brief explanation of how to play, and the strategy for its use.

Gamestorming is one of those books (kind of like Dan Roam’s Back of the Napkin or Doug Hall’s Jump Start Your Business Brain) that you’re going to want figure out a way to use right away.  While you’re going to recognize a few of the games, unless you’re really a visual and experience guru, there are going to be plenty that you’ll react like I did when you see them.  I want to try Campfire!  I want to try The 4Cs!  I want to try the Pain Gain Map!  And so will you.

Okay…this is seriously cool.  If you’re interested in innovation, you’ve to check it out.  If you can’t see the video below, you can click here and watch it (HT Collide)

Carpetbagger: A Rare Look Inside Pixar Studios – nytimes.com/video from The New York Times on Vimeo.

Working my way through The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo.  And “working” is really not the right word.  Much like he did with The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Gallo does a great job of fleshing out each secret with an anecdote or two from Jobs’ amazing story.  The book is full of great stories, both from Jobs’ life and the lives of other notables, that illustrate the principle.

Gallo has identified 7 secrets or principles that are essential to Jobs’ innovative track record.  If you’re at all familiar with Jobs’ career at Apple and Pixar, you’ll recognize many of the secrets right away:

• Do What You Love
• Put a Dent in the Universe
• Kick Start Your Brain
• Sell Dreams, Not Products
• Say No to 1,000 Things
• Create Inanely Great Experiences
• Master the Message

Each of the secrets is illustrated with a one-two punch of chapters; the first, fine tuning the principle, the second, laying out some practical takeaways about how to apply the principle.  For example, principle #3 is Kick Start Your Brain.  The two chapters supporting it are Seek Out New Experiences and Think Differently About How You Think.

Seek New Experiences cites examples of Jobs’ track record of “bombarding the brain with new experiences.”  He studied calligraphy, spent time in a commune, visited India, and hired musicians, artists, poets and historians.  Gallo makes the point that “some of Jobs’ most creative insights are the direct result of seeking out novel experiences either in physical locations or among people with whom he chose to associate (p. 89).”

Think Differently about How You Think points out “five skills that separate true innovators from the rest of us”:

• Associating: Innovators seek out diverse experiences
• Questioning: Innovators get a kick out of questioning the status quo
• Experimenting: Successful innovators engage in “active” experimentation
• Networking: Innovators surround themselves with interesting people who expand their domain of knowledge
• Observing: Innovators watch people carefully, especially the behavior of potential customers

Each of the application chapters conclude with a short list of “iLessons,” practical steps that you can take to implement the principle.

I have to say, although I find the stories fascinating and thoroughly engaging, it’s the practical application that has the greatest potential for me.  I’ve read many books on innovation.  This is one that goes beyond biography, beyond what the innovator did, and identifies a little bit of a path.

If you’re a student of innovation…The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs ought to be on your reading list.

Every once in a while I trip across a book that intrigues me right out of the gate and holds my attention to the very end.  I have to say, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation is one of those books.  The newest by Steven Johnson, this one takes a painstaking look at innovation from the vantage point of evolutionary science.  And let me be quick to add, regardless of your first glance reaction to the notion of evolution…this book is packed with great insight to the way innovation happens.

Where Good Ideas Comes From takes a look at seven concepts that can be demonstrated in natural history and illustrated in contemporary innovation.  For example, the first concept Johnson teases out is the idea of the adjacent possible; essentially the principle that every new development puts you into a next space that often makes ideas implementable that weren’t before.  A phrase coined by scientist Stuart Kauffman, “the adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself (p. 31).”

If you’ve followed along here at StrategyCentral.org (or over on MarkHowellLive.com) you might recognize right away the reason I was intrigued by the concept of the adjacent possible.  I’ve written quite a bit about Glen Hiemstra’s three cone model, in fact, it’s become the basis for my talk on getting to there.  One of the concepts in the talk (and Hiemstra’s diagram) is the idea that in handcrafting a preferred future for your organization (a vision):

• some of what you land on comes from the probable future (where your organization will end up if you just keep doing what you’re doing now)
• some will be the fruit of identifying the best of what’s possible and energetically going after that
• and some will actually come from outside what is currently possible

The concept of the adjacent possible gives me a way to think about how some of the preferred future can develop from outside or beyond what’s currently possible.

Where Good Ideas Come From takes a look at six other concepts in addition to the adjacent possible and each one has a number of insights and if you’re like me, your copy will be underlined, dogeared and starred with quotes and references you want to come back to later.

If you’re looking for a book that will help you think outside the box, or step into the adjacent possible, Where Good Ideas Come From should be on your list.

I am a big fan of creativity and this video is sheer creativity.  This video won best music video at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.  You can check out the other award winners right here. (Thanks to Brad Lomenick for sharing this earlier in the week)

Look what you can do with a little spare time and a huge helping of creative energy:

Picked up a new book this week in my ongoing search for innovation ideas and strategies.  Innovation X, by Adam Richardson came to the top of the stack.  30 pages in, this is going to be a great addition to my thinking.

A creative director at frog design, Richardson has worked with companies like HP, Intel, Yahoo, Motorola, and Logitech.   In describing his work, he points out that much of his time is focused on “strategic issues and sitting down with executives and product managers whose fundamental question is, ‘What should we make?’

Sound familiar?  Aren’t many of us asking that same question?  What should we make? After all, if we’re mindlessly making the same product we’ve been making for years or generations…you probably have already lost the market.  So you’ve more than likely been tweaking the product, trying to stay relevant.

And yet…in many, many cases…tweaking the product has not worked.  It’s like we have missed the moment.

“But often,” he continues, “they do not even know exactly what the problem is they are trying to solve.”  That sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?  Don’t many of us feel like we know things aren’t right…but we’re not sure why.

This feels like a great book right at the outset.  Want to come along?  You can pick up your copy right here.